It Could Have Been Different
by imelda72
Summary: Draco's a Death Eater, but it isn't his fault. During a battle, he takes a moment to reflect upon the choices he's made and the people who boxed him into them. Slight DG.


Curses flew from his wand, felling one Auror after another. He was dragged into duel after duel with people he had gone to school with, perhaps sat a few rows away from in class. It didn't matter who he knew, though, as he was barely controlling his own movements. His body seemed to act of its own accord, well acquainted as it was with this task of defending and destroying.

Then he found himself across from Potter. The rest of Hogsmeade faded into nothingness around him; the other Death Eaters in their black robes and the Aurors in scarlet seemed to blend into the grayness of the day like so much snow and fog, and all that was left was Draco and the Boy Who Lived, Malfoy and Potter.

Draco hurled a hex and Potter evaded it, and in that moment their final showdown began. The two wizards were bound together as inextricably as a Priori Incantatem, locked into this battle until death. Draco wanted Potter to die, there was no question about it—Potter had to die, for Draco could not imagine that his own life would be the one to end.

As he felt the wand tugged inexorably from his fingers and saw it shoot towards Potter, Draco wondered for the first time in his life if there had ever been a chance for him to avoid this fate. A memory washed over him, then, one that he had repressed years ago, and it filled his senses again as he remembered every detail.

He had tried something different once. One day he had stepped out of the entrance doors of the castle, when all of the grounds had been covered in pure, newly-fallen, glittering snow. It was early on a Saturday morning and almost no one was up yet. But he had slept poorly and finally decided to pass the time before breakfast by taking a stroll in the crisp, invigorating air. He had worn his favorite forest green cloak, a thick, fur-lined cloth clasped with a silver M clip. His boots were newly polished, as usual, and his scarf and gloves were brand new, gifts from his mother brought back from the Christmas holidays. He particularly liked the scarf; it was a brighter green than the cloak, made of lambswool and silk and knitted by hand to a luxuriant thickness. It had an elegant black trim, as well, a nice touch to finish the look.

Draco left the castle now and took a deep breath of the cool, silent morning air. The sun was high enough in the sky to reflect almost blindingly against the snow; there were no clouds to shield its glare. The Forbidden Forest looked like a wintry wonderland, and the usually blue lake was all frozen over and covered in a layer of white snow.

Draco looked off in the opposite direction, across the grounds nearer to the Quidditch pitch. The monochromatic landscape was soothing in its cold beauty, but all of a sudden his eyes grazed across a jarring, warm, incongruous color that ruined it all.

It was Weasley red.

She stood there perfectly still and ankle-deep in snow, as if she had every right to, though she was destroying the perfect scenery. His body as independent as ever, he felt himself marching towards the gleaming hair, preparing to tell her off or maybe push her down or maybe even hex her to pieces. He trudged through the snow until he was within earshot of her and opened his mouth to pick a fight, but felt the words fade away.

She was beautiful, for one thing. He had never noticed before, being so caught up in hating and scorning her. But now, as he observed her bright, fire-like hair falling neatly about her freckled face, and her delicate profile leading down to her long neck, he noticed. He also realized she was shivering. The grey cloak she wore, clearly a man's cloak handed down to her from one of the myriad of older brothers she had, was so old it was worn into useless thinness. Her brown boots were scruffy-looking and the leather tired. Her lumpy knit gloves had holes in the fingers, and he saw she had balled up her hands within them to minimize exposure to the air.

She was _cold_.

Without a word and without even realizing he was doing it, Draco had reached up with his warmly gloved hands and removed the green scarf from around his neck.

The movement caught her attention from a couple of meters away and she turned abruptly, her brown eyes widening in shock and narrowing in suspicion when she saw who it was.

"Malfoy," she said frostily, eyeing his hands carefully. He moved towards her, and her eyes widened again, but this time they met his defiantly and she refused to retreat. "What do you want?" she finally demanded when he stopped within reach of her. Draco couldn't say anything, but as he glanced down to look at the scarf in his hands he saw that his arms were extending, and his eyes followed the motion of his hands and watched as they loosely placed the green scarf around her bare neck.

The girl Weasley looked completely shocked, and looked down at the scarf admiringly but doubtfully.

"What the hell is this?" she asked when she finally looked at him again.

"It's for you," he said, silently praying she would just shut up and accept it. She hesitated for a good few moments, and for that time they stood there staring at each other, gray eyes openly into prying browns, Draco's mind began to formulate all sorts of possibilities, futures that could arise from this simple act.

He was completely unprepared for Weasley to snort derisively and tear the scarf off of her, tossing it carelessly into the snow at his feet.

"Yeah right, Malfoy. Like I would trust anything that came out of your hands." She shook her head sharply, as if shaking away a bothersome thought, turned, and stalked back to the castle, her shabby boots leaving behind an uncompromising trail of footsteps.

After she had disappeared without a glance backward, Draco had leaned down and picked up the scarf, shaking the snow off with furiously trembling hands and wrapping it once around his own neck. He tried to suppress the anger that threatened to swamp him, and in the end all he was left with was a deadening feeling of disappointment. He couldn't remember the last time he had freely offered a gift to someone, other than to his parents, and he wasn't entirely sure he ever had.

He knew for a fact he never would again.

That night as he thought back over the incident in bed, he decided that it couldn't and shouldn't have been any different. He quashed the small part of his mind that continued to wish she had taken the scarf, and had put the memory out of his consciousness forever.

Until now. Now he watched Potter catch his wand with his red-robed arm, red the color of her hair, and he remembered. And he remembered too that Potter and the girl belonged to each other now, and as light the color of that old green scarf illumined the Hogsmeade battle before everything went black, he saw how fitting it was that they be in love, when they had equally rejected him and perhaps had even equally damned him.


End file.
